Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has paid low seven figures for North American rights to Jonathan Levine's The Wackness, which won the 2008 Sundance Film Festival's Audience Award: Dramatic prize on Saturday [Jan 26].
The deal marked SPC's third pick-up following Courtney Hunt's dramatic grand jury prize winner Frozen River and Mark and Jay Duplass' comedy Baghead.
The Wackness is Levine's follow-up to his 2006 slasher film All The Boys Love Mandy Lane - which is finally set to open in the US this spring through Senator - and starts Josh Peck as a young drug dealer who experiences an emotionally turbulent summer in New York in 1994.
Ben Kingsley plays a pot smoking therapist who befriends the youngster. Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen and Mary-Kate Olsen and Method Man round out the key cast. SPC negotiated the deal with CAA on behalf of the film-makers.
Liberation Entertainment and Netflix's Red Envelope Entertainment each signed unique distribution deals for Susan Koch's documentary Kicking It about the 2006 Homeless World Cup.
Liberation will handle North American and Central American theatrical, DVD and ancillary rights to the film and in a break with the traditional window hierarchy the previously announced ESPN deal will see the broadcast release follow theatrical.
Red Envelope Entertainment will provide the film to Netflix subscribers to rent on DVD or watch instantly on a PC day-and-date with the ESPN broadcast. CAA and Submarine represented the producers in the negotiations with Liberation and Netflix.
As the festival came to a close over the weekend offers were believed to be on the table for early favourite Sunshine Cleaning and the drama was expected to close by the end of the week. Deals were also expected to close within the week on Barry Levinson's high profile comedy What Just Happened', as well as Trouble the Water, Bigger Stronger Faster, and A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures.
Also in play were Man On Wire, Ballast, Sugar, Phoebe In Wonderland, Transsiberian, Made In America, Great Buck Howard, Birds Of America, August, Bottleshock and Anvil! The Story Of Anvil. An international deal was also understood to be close on Frozen River.
The deal marked SPC's third pick-up following Courtney Hunt's dramatic grand jury prize winner Frozen River and Mark and Jay Duplass' comedy Baghead.
The Wackness is Levine's follow-up to his 2006 slasher film All The Boys Love Mandy Lane - which is finally set to open in the US this spring through Senator - and starts Josh Peck as a young drug dealer who experiences an emotionally turbulent summer in New York in 1994.
Ben Kingsley plays a pot smoking therapist who befriends the youngster. Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen and Mary-Kate Olsen and Method Man round out the key cast. SPC negotiated the deal with CAA on behalf of the film-makers.
Liberation Entertainment and Netflix's Red Envelope Entertainment each signed unique distribution deals for Susan Koch's documentary Kicking It about the 2006 Homeless World Cup.
Liberation will handle North American and Central American theatrical, DVD and ancillary rights to the film and in a break with the traditional window hierarchy the previously announced ESPN deal will see the broadcast release follow theatrical.
Red Envelope Entertainment will provide the film to Netflix subscribers to rent on DVD or watch instantly on a PC day-and-date with the ESPN broadcast. CAA and Submarine represented the producers in the negotiations with Liberation and Netflix.
As the festival came to a close over the weekend offers were believed to be on the table for early favourite Sunshine Cleaning and the drama was expected to close by the end of the week. Deals were also expected to close within the week on Barry Levinson's high profile comedy What Just Happened', as well as Trouble the Water, Bigger Stronger Faster, and A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures.
Also in play were Man On Wire, Ballast, Sugar, Phoebe In Wonderland, Transsiberian, Made In America, Great Buck Howard, Birds Of America, August, Bottleshock and Anvil! The Story Of Anvil. An international deal was also understood to be close on Frozen River.
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